Issey Miyake was an iconic fashion designer for many.

Designer Issei Miyake has passed away at the age of 84, leaving an indelible mark on the world of fashion. It was celebrated for clothes that responded to the body in motion and were conceptual in design but perfectly suited for everyday life. The clothes were often made of simple geometric shapes with finely woven fabrics, which resulted in new and unexpected images.

Miyake stood out from the fashion crowd in several ways. For an international audience, it was heartwarming and meaningful to see a non-Western designer not only establishing their own successful multicultural fashion business globally, but presenting fashion outside of established and conventional imagery, textile patterns and images.

For future fashion designers, there is much to learn from Miyake’s bravery, from the creative innovation of Japanese clothing practices to the introduction of new textile technologies and visual imagery. Perhaps most relevant to modern audiences is his holistic vision, which aims to “design for the masses”. He showed this not only in the design and cut of his clothes, but also in the models he chose to feature in his shows and campaigns. Miyake always makes sure that “the majority” means including models from the background.

A view of equality

In the year Born in Hiroshima, Japan in 1938, Miyake was seven years old when his hometown was destroyed by an atomic bomb, marking the end of World War II in Asia. He suffered a serious leg injury and soon lost his mother to radiation sickness, an event that inspired him to “think about things that can be created, not destroyed.”

Miyake in 2010 Rights and rapid social change. This made Miyake question the status quo and inspired him to think about fashion design in a more egalitarian and radical way.

In 1970, he founded Miyake Design Studio. The first step is based on the concept of “piece of cloth”, which is a two-dimensional design of fabric quality and reduces waste. When he worked at the World’s Fair exhibition in Osaka, Expo 70, it was dubbed “Constructive Fashion”.

Miyake was fascinated by the interaction between clothes and the body, exploring what fashion could be. This is especially evident in his many innovations, combining his Japanese heritage with his European and North American experiences. He developed his vision for contemporary fashion by fusing Western styles with Eastern textiles and silhouettes, using Japanese gangster tattoos as textile designs, sashiko coat coats and kimono-inspired geometric shapes for scarf dresses.

Violation with meeting

Along with designers Rei Kawakubo and Yohaji Yamamoto, his work was part of a wave of Japanese designers who asserted the importance of looking at fashion outside of mainstream Euro-American fashion narratives. When I studied fashion history in the 2000s, it seemed to only exist in London, Paris, Milan and New York, but this “new wave” of Japanese designers paved the way for other international designers to follow.

In the year Throughout the 1980s, Miyake continued to experiment with exhibiting his work in museums and galleries. He further explored materials, such as sculpted busts, bamboo and rattan bodices that began to resemble sculptures, all the while using fashion as a tool to study the body. In the year In 1981, he created Plantation, a gender-neutral line designed to be worn by all ages and body shapes in naturally easy-care fabrics. The collection was renovated and renamed the Issey Miyake Permanente in 1985.

His brand Pleats Please was established in 1988 and was developed from a new decoration technology that developed a variety of clothes for pleats. The patches provide a practical benefit as they create stretch in the garment, allowing them to be versatile in size. This was another player development in Miyake’s boundary disruption.

In the year In 1999, he introduced the A-POC range, a return to the original concept of a piece of cloth. The range features long tubular knit fabrics that can be cut to the desired length by the wearer. These simple styles have become iconic and are worn by men and women of all ages, representing the perfect embodiment of Mike’s sartorial vision of “East meets West.” They exist as something special, but offer everyday functionality.

Miyake brings this spirit of experimentation and boundary-pushing to his performances. This was exemplified in his radical show Issei Miyake and the Twelve Black Girls held in Tokyo at the Seibu Theater and the Osaka Municipal Gymnasium. The show, which ran for more than a month, uncharacteristically put 12 black models front and center, including Grace Jones.

In her autobiography, Jones credits Miak with her support when she was a young model in Paris. This piece represents his forward-thinking and inclusive thinking at a time when it was not common to show designs solely on color models.

Whether inventing garment shapes, using technology to excite new fabrics, reducing fabric waste or designing gender-bending pieces, his vision has always been contemporary and for everyday wear. Issei Miyake was a true trailblazer, and his pioneering vision will be greatly missed.

Noreen Kamisani is a Lecturer in Fashion and Textile Design at the University of Portsmouth.

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